Story Highlights

The “Phoenix lights” make a natural jumping-off point for a science fiction movie; frankly, in the 20 years since hundreds of people spotted them, it’s surprising more fictional stories haven’t popped up based on the event.

The official explanation, after all — that the lights were military flares — has proven unsatisfactory to many. Of course what’s what they would say. Oh, they know, but they’re just not telling us.

“Phoenix Forgotten,” Justin Barber’s film, offers one explanation, and it leans heavily on “The Blair Witch Project” and “The X-Files” to find it. The film, which Barber co-wrote with T.S. Nowlin (Ridley Scott — yes, that Ridley Scott, is a producer), ties the appearance of the lights with the soon-thereafter disappearance of three teenagers.

Now, 20 years later, Sophie (Florence Hartigan), the younger sister of one of the missing kids, is making a documentary about them and their disappearance. Her boyfriend tags along, with his ever-present camera, recording everything for the film they’re making, including rides in the car, on the plane, etc.

"Phoenix Forgotten" is set in the Valley.(Photo: Phoenix Lights Distribution)

Yes, it’s a found-footage film, a genre that seemed played out not long after it arrived, and “Phoenix Forgotten” doesn’t do anything to revive it.

It was during Sophie’s sixth birthday party that her family, and hundreds of other people, saw the lights. Her brother Josh (Luke Spencer Roberts), a budding filmmaker, taped the party and managed to get the lights on camera. He and his friends Ashley (Chelsea Lopez) and Mark (Justin Matthews) set out to make a film about the lights, but after heading into the rugged terrain around Phoenix looking for clues they simply disappeared, never to be heard from again.

Sophie locates law-enforcement officials who worked on the case in 1997, and while they all say it was unusual — they found Mark’s car, fully operational, along with Josh’s camera and a couple of beers, but not much else — they don’t have any explanation for what happened. Josh had filmed everything until all of a sudden he stopped. It’s maddening for Sophie (and slow for the audience).

Through some digging and some luck, Sophie turns up a missing tape of Josh’s, one that the government warns her not to let the public see. The last third of the film consists of that tape and nothing more. It’s an odd construction and it cries out for some context. After all, Barber hasn’t gone full-“Blair Witch” before. Up to this point he shifts between the present and the tapes Josh left behind. Now, however, he just lets the tape play.

No spoilers about what’s on it, except to say again that the influence of “The Blair Witch Project” and “The X-Files” is strong. (At one point in the film Josh is making he uses “The X-Files” theme.)

It’s kind of fun to revisit the sightings, and the way the media fell all over themselves trying to figure out a way to cover them. We see clips of then-Gov. Fife Symington’s press conference in which he introduced his chief of staff dressed in an alien suit, along with later CNN clips in which he semi-famously says he believes, in lieu of a better explanation, that it probably was a UFO, “basically admitting he lied,” Sophie says to the camera, after seeing the footage.

The story is predictable and the acting nothing special (though Clint Jordan is effective as the still-heartbroken father of Sophie and Josh). “The search for the truth continues,” a scroll says at the end of the film.